Adherence to ALARA principle in the era of COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak impacted healthcare applications in an unprecedented way. ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) principle is strongly endorsed in the radiology community to protect patients from potential harms of radiation. Depending on several CT applications related to COVID-19 outbreak, the adherence to this vital principle seems questionable in these days. Globally documented COVID-19 cases approximate 5 million, and the number of people undergoing CT examinations is increasing continually. Moreover, if this outbreak did not occur, probably CT would not be performed to the majority of these patients in this time period. This indicates that more number of individuals than expected are exposed to radiation dose from medical imaging applications because of this outbreak. predictive value prolonged turnaround times RT-PCR uti-lization CT of containment the Ding 8 CT scans for individuals (average, in lungs 3 CT scans number of